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If you think that you can comfortably stop nurturing your leads as soon as they make that ever-important sale, you're only seeing one small part of a much larger and more important picture. The fact of the matter is that you can NEVER nurture your leads too much for a variety of important reasons.

Why Lead Nurturing is So Important

Lead nurturing is an essential part of any business, but judging by some recent studies, it may be more important than you think. According to Gleanster Research, as many as half of all the leads coming into your business may be qualified, but they're not yet ready to buy. Nurturing is perhaps the single best way to make sure you're able to convert as much of that 50% as possible into a sale.

To make things more interesting, research from InsideSales.com shows that between 35% and 50% of all sales go to a brand that responds to a customer FIRST. This means that even if you know you're working with a qualified lead AND you know that they'll eventually be ready to buy, they may not buy with YOU at all if you don't have a timely presence in their life.

That, in a nutshell, is why lead nurturing is so mission critical to your organization. If you're not nurturing properly and using timely marketing collateral to help usher someone down the sales funnel, you may be doing little more than perfectly setting someone up to make a purchase with one of your competitors.

NSN: "Never Stop Nurturing"

Consumers want to be loyal to a brand. However, they're also loyal to themselves and their own situations first and foremost. If you think that just because you've ushered a lead down the sales funnel and convinced them to make a purchase that you'll have them forever, you're sadly mistaken. And, unfortunately, this is one mistake that you're likely to pay dearly for.

Remember that "making a sale" is NOT the only benefit of consistent lead nurturing. According to research, leads that have been nurtured experience a 23% shorter sales cycle than those who have not been. Nurturing over time (as opposed to just in the beginning of your relationship) can even increase your revenue over the next six to nine months by as much as 10% or more.

Remember that a constant and consistent nurturing gives way to perhaps the biggest benefit of all: retention. According to one study, it costs 500% more to bring in a new customer than it does to keep a current one. Likewise, the cost of bringing a new customer up to the same level of profitability as one of your old ones is up to 16% more. All of this is to say that by adopting the mantra of "I can never nurture a lead too much" today, you could be saving yourself a tremendous amount of money tomorrow.

Nurturing a lead to the point where you've made a sale is important, but this is not the point where your story ends. Consistently nurturing your leads even AFTER a sale will continue to pay dividends over the lifetime of your relationship with that person. The benefits of retention versus bringing in new customers alone should be more than worth the effort you'll need to make.